SHOAH Lanzmann Polonophobia Exposed Nowicki

The Defamation of the Poles, by Stefan Nowicki. 1989

Deconstruction of Claude Lanzmann’s SHOAH, and The Legacy of Polonophobia

Although nearly 30 have passed since this book was published, it remains relevant. This owes to the fact that SHOAH is still widely used, and because the same anti-Polish themes of Lanzmann are being repeated by the likes of media-acclaimed Jan T. Gross.

The author, Stefan Nowicki, himself was a victim of the Holocaust (in the non-Judeocentric sense). He was a prisoner in German penal camps, and was imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo. (p. 6).

THE ULTIMATE EXTERMINATORY GOAL OF THE GERMAN POLOKAUST

Nowicki provides interesting information about various topics. He includes an article that mentions a secret letter from Hitler about his intentions to exterminate the Polish people as a whole. This is described in NEUE ZEITUNG, November 1945. (p. 60).

THE NSZ AND THE JEWS

The author debunks accusations that the Polish Underground NSZ was anti-Semitic. (pp. 37-38). In fact, an NSZ unit, marching across German-occupied Czechoslovakia in the final phases of WWII in Europe, liberated a concentration camp (Holysov/Holyszow/Holleischen, a subcamp of Flossenburg), saving hundreds of Jewish women from being burned alive in their barracks by the SS. (pp. 65-68). For more on this, see: Bylem Dowodca Brygady Swietokrzyskiej: Narodowych Sil Zbrojnych (The Holy Cross Brigade of the NSZ: I Led it.).

CLAUDE LANZMANN AND HIS SHOAH

Nowicki suggests the Lanzmann, a French Jew, chose to attack Poles instead of exposing the odious collaborationist conduct of Vichy France (pp. 21-23) for a simple reason. He feared provoking the French. (p. 23). Nowicki also notes that the Communist authorities in Poland gave Lanzmann permission to shoot his film there, and did so because the slandering of pre-WWII Poland was their only pseudo-claim to legitimacy. (p. 23). [Exactly the same tactics are used nowadays by Poland’s post-Communists, LEWAKS (leftists), neo-Stalinists (e. g., Jan T. Gross), etc.]

The author takes Lanzmann to task for zeroing-in on one interviewed peasant who laughed, and for asking leading questions of all the peasants. These leading questions included the following: “Why didn’t you like Jews?” “In Poland of course there was an anti-Semitic feeling; what was this due to?” “So you were ploughing while on the tracks alongside the fields rumbled the transport trains to the Treblinka camp?” (p. 54).

JEWISH VOICES AGAINST HOLOCAUST-RELATED POLONOPHOBIA

Nowicki quotes a number of Jewish authors who have spoken out, and I quote two of them.

Adam Szarf, a Polish Jew, condemned Lanzmann for his accusations, and wrote, “Anti-Semitism would have been neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for locating a camp at Treblinka.” (p. 14). [Szarf wrote this in the London TYDZIEN POLSKI, November 6, 1987.] In view of the never-ending mendacity about “Polish death camps”, and the insinuations about Polish attitudes determining the Nazis’ siting of the camps in occupied Poland, Szarf’s comments have enduring significance. Szarf also credited Poles for accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees in 1938. (p. 16).

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Honorary President of the World Jewish Council, blasted the 1978 HOLOCAUST television series. (pp. 51-52). [He wrote this in the April 27, 1978 issue of the London DAILY NEWS BULLETIN.] Goldmann soundly rejected the common tendency to see Jewish sufferings as qualitatively different from that of Poles. He wrote, “It is sheer nonsense to compare Poles with Nazis. Poles suffered no less than we did. We suffered greater losses proportion-wise, but the Poles also suffered enormously. The Polish nation was the only nation which never had any Quisling…” (p. 51).

ENDURING HOLOCAUST-RELATED ANTI-POLONISM: THE UNDERLYING CAUSE

The more things change, the more they remain the same. The following statement by Nowicki is timeless: (quote) The Jews spent hundreds of millions of dollars on publications about their most tragic history during the Second World War. Jewish publications describing the Holocaust are characterized by one-sidedness and by the fact that they avoid mention of circumstances in which it happened. Jewish authors write exclusively about the suffering of the Jews and about their persecution, and the experience of people who were deprived of human dignity, as if only they suffered, as if the Holocaust only concerned them, and as if the others, non-Jews, did not suffer, were not persecuted, were not tortured, but lived normally, peacefully, and comfortably. (unquote). (p. 24).

AMERICAN JEWS NOW DIVERT ATTENTION FROM THEIR FOREBEARS’ INACTION

Nowicki also documents, in considerable detail, the dubious level of the support of American Jews for European Jews during WWII (pp. 19-20) and notes the irony, “Influential American Jews, who today in such an aggressive manner accuse the Poles of cooperation with Germans in murdering Jews, lived in wealth and security while genocide was being conducted upon the European Jews and a genocidal war was being conducted against the Polish nation, and have no moral right to accuse the Poles.” (p. 20). Touche!